A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (63 page)

Half of us are talking about moving. Flagg has already left for New York, for grad school, and I
’
m vaguely thinking about moving, too. But what I really want is to just swim around in a warm baby pool of these friends, jump in their dry leaf pile—to rub them all over myself, without words and clothes.

But we are all sitting, needing to talk, to catch up. There is a band. They are playing
‘
50s hits. There are three female singers with bouffants. They are going all out, these people. Older couples start dancing. I do not like the older couples, who dominate this wedding of two young people, these older couples everywhere, dancing in a jittery way, each either too slow or much much too fast, like that one woman, in gold lame, doing some kind of Latin maneuver, as the band plays the Beach Boys, like she
’
s trying to crush ants with her high heels. She wears, as they all wear, an expression that says
Oh yeah!
or
All right!
or—

I want to jump through the plate-glass window and into the
club
’
s backyard, and then run to the cliff and jump down, into Lake Michigan. Or at least go outside and walk around. But it
’
s too cold. And I don
’
t have the shoes. I can go upstairs. I can grab everyone and we can leave. I want us all to be in one big bed, naked. Maybe not naked—

The bride and groom leave, and the old people leave, and the guy who shook my hand in the bathroom, insisted on it as we stood at neighboring urinals, is thrown out for getting into a kind of physical sort of fight with his girlfriend, and then everyone is gone and we are the last ones, all of us sitting around, the sweat dried on us, debating where to go, someone
’
s house, a bar, it
’
s only midnight, and we end up at Megann
’
s, eating cookies in her kitchen, looking at the pictures on her refrigerator, as we had a hundred times before, keeping quiet because her parents were asleep upstairs.

We had all taken spots in the various empty beds, so I wake up in Megann
’
s brother
’
s room. He
’
s at college, and the room is dark, thickly carpeted, full of mahogany furniture and hockey trophies, team pictures. A stick signed by Denis Savard.

I drive Marny home.

Then back to work.

An hour or so later I
’
m walking across the yard of my old house. There
’
s a new mailbox. They
’
ve fixed that broken post, repainted the front door.

Already I feel bad for these people. These poor people. They
’
ve made a mistake letting me in. What will happen when this happens? They should not have invited me. I would have understood if they had not invited me. But the father called and said I could come and here I am. This will be bad. Things will happen. I will slip and tell them things they don
’
t want to hear.

No, no. I will be good. This will be fine.

The door opens and they are all there.
Do they always answer
the door together?
There are three young children, all under seven, two boys and a girl, the father with a sweater and a mustache, the mother with a bobbed haircut, the children hiding behind them, peeking behind their legs. I shake the man
’
s hand. They let me in their house.

It makes no sense for them to let me into their house. The only thing they know about me is that I once lived here. I wonder if they know what happened there. I assume they do. The parents at least. Not these perfect little children. I will not tell.

We walk straight into the kitchen and the light! The place is filled with light. I look around quickly, trying to find the source of all this light. The walls have been repainted. The wood paneling is gone. Other walls are missing. They
’
ve knocked down walls! Cabinets are gone or moved and replaced. There
’
s a new window, or the window is bigger. I can
’
t tell. I can
’
t tell what
’
s different. It all looks different. And small. It looks like a house for small people. But these people are regular height.

We tour. They have renamed the living room the family room, and vice versa. They
’
ve removed the wall-to-wall white carpeting, revealing perfect wood floors, and there
’
s new paint everywhere, the ceilings are fixed, and skylights! We talk, and I ask questions about how they did this and did that. I ask technical questions.

“
Is this new molding?

“
Is this drywall?
”

And I quickly become not the former inhabitant of this place, not some masochistic oddity, but a friendly neighbor with an interest in decorating.

Upstairs, the bedrooms are cheerful, pinks, light blues for kids
’
rooms. My room is unrecognizable. The orange forest wallpaper is gone, my drawings are gone. The carpet is gone, the mirrors on the closet gone. The broken door has been replaced.

Everything is so neat, so tidy, the toys bright, rounded. The children
’
s bathroom has special children
’
s fixtures, little blue and
red and yellow toothbrushes. The master bedroom—that
’
s where the skylight is. We had never thought of a skylight. Good god, a skylight. It is so bright, this room, and where there was a walk-in closet full of my father
’
s suits, where it smelled so much of him, the leather belts and smoke-drenched suits and shoe polish there is now—there is now a Jacuzzi.

I ask them how, how all this—

“
We put a lot of time into this house,
”
the father says. He makes a soft whistling sound, underlining just how much work it had needed.

“
Yeah,
”
I say.
“
We kind of let things slide there for a while.
”

We go back downstairs, the kids following us around. The laundry room has been repainted, the carpet replaced. The bathroom by the garage no longer has the wallpaper with the groovy expressions. Through the small tall bathroom window, the backyard looks much the same, white with snow, the hill dotted with plastic toys and red sleds.

The sky is white. I am at the beach. I
’
m at the beach because I need a phone, and refuse to conduct this business at the train station, in the middle of town. I call Eric and Grant
’
s machine to see if the oncologist has called back. He has not. The beach is empty. The cold is savage. It couldn
’
t be above ten degrees.

I walk from the parking lot along the brick-sidewalked promenade, inspecting the benches, each paid for and dedicated. I decide that I will buy one of these benches, that I will dedicate a bench to my mother, maybe one for him, maybe one for both—it would depend how much they cost. Most of the benches
’
inscriptions simply list a name, but on one, near the phone, it reads:

Roses are red Violets are blue We like the beach And hope you do, too.

Good lord. I can do better than that.

Ill get a bench. Ill get Beth and Bill to chip in. Finally we will do something. We can afford this. We owe this—

Which reminds me—I gasp, audibly, alone on the beach— that Toph
’
s high school financial aid forms are due the next day. We have applied to five or six private high schools, and now must submit an application for aid to a national processing center. I did not do it before I left, had left it for the plane, and now here I am, at the lake, with three hours to make it to the FedEx box.

I go to the car and get my backpack, return and lay the application
’
s pages out on one of the picnic tables near the guardhouse. As always, I am immediately stumped by the questions. I don
’
t know or quickly forget everything in this arena—Social Security numbers, bank account numbers, the amount we have in savings. Beth will know.

I use the pay phone under the awning of the snack bar, soaked from the icicles melting above it. I wipe away the puddles, the water warmer than expected, and call Beth in San Francisco. Beth knows why I am in Chicago, but does not understand why I am at the lake in December.

“
I don
’
t know. I am. There
’
s a phone here. It
’
s cold.
”

“
I have to call you back.
”

“
Beth. It
’
s freezing.
”

“
I
’
m on the phone. Give me the number there.
”

“
It
’
s like zero degrees here.
”

“
It
’
s what?
”

“
There are no degrees here, Beth.
”

“
Ill call you back in ten minutes.
”

I give her the number, and lie down on a picnic table. I experiment with staying warm. Is it warmer when sitting still, or when moving? I guess I know that it
’
s warmer when moving, but for a minute I entertain the notion that I can lie still, and can
will
my blood to circulate. With my eyes closed, my breath loud, I
direct my blood to speed up, imagine that I am watching it, picturing conveyors and Habitrails... I doze for five, ten minutes, thinking of life on other planets.

The phone rings. Beth is annoyed.

“
Listen, do we have to do this now?
”

“
Yes.
”

“
Why?
”

“
Because I have to FedEx it today.
”

“
Why?
”

“
Because they
’
re due tomorrow.
”

“
Why didn
’
t you do it before now?
”

“
That doesn
’
t matter now.
”

“
Listen, I
’
m still at a pay phone. At the beach. By the lake. It
’
s winter. Winter is cold. Can we just do this?
”

“
Fine.
”

We go over the numbers.

“
Thanks. That
’
s it. Bye.
”

Out of habit—I tend to call Bill shortly after Beth—I call Bill and Toph in L.A. and get his machine. They are no doubt at the beach, a real beach, warm, watching women play volleyball. I ramble into his tape recorder for a while and hang up. Two men jog by, wearing Chicago Bears sweat suits. As they putter by, they watch me, because I am sitting on a picnic table, with a pen in my mouth, surrounded by papers. I finish filling out the forms and stuff them into my backpack.

On the way to the parking lot, past the snackbar, I put my face against the guardhouse window. Inside, just behind the desk of whoever sits behind a desk at a beach, is a picture of maybe fifteen lifeguards, posed in bathing suits. All in orange, all grinning, all with extremely white teeth, blond hair, silver-white hair. There are a few I recognize. The picture must be five, six years old. And there, in the back row, is Sarah Mulhern. She looks much as I
remember her—tan, blue-eyed, sad-eyed, blond, curvy. I knew she was a lifeguard, but had never seen her guarding here, had been at the beach hundreds of times but had never seen her or this picture. And now—

It
’
s too weird. I make a note to write that one down.

At the car, I drop my backpack inside and walk back and call Beth again.

“
Listen. I have a question for you.
”

“
Yes.
”

“
You know about those ashes?
”

“
What?
”

“
You heard me.
”

“
Oh no. Whose?
”

“
Both, either.
”

“
What about them?
”

“
Well, you never got them back, right?
”